The title is a little on the facetious side, but winter hit Kansas City pretty good on January 24th. We had bone chilling cold and snow (4-5″ locally). Then the following 8 days never got above freezing, so I have not bee able to get out to a park to do a Parks On The Air (POTA) activation and the withdrawal has been real.
Now, I realize some of the readers of this page may wonder why I don’t just go to a park and activate from the warmth of my truck? The issue there is that I believe that the spirit of the POTA program is to get out and do portable operation. I do not view operating from my truck as portable as much as it is mobile. What’s the difference, you may ask? Portable, to me, means that I get out and carry my equipment to a location, set it up, operate, take it down and carry it back to the vehicle.
If you are a ham that operates from their vehicle, I support you in every way. I have no problems with operating from the vehicle in the parking lot of a park. It is just not my idea of portable.
The good news is that we are coming out of the deep freeze this week. Temps are above freezing for the forecastable future (~10 days), so the snow will melt and the weather will be conducive to portable park operations.
Hopefully, I will catch you on the air!
73,
Dave – AA0IW